Bohrman is now rushing to develop a morning show that could provide a liberal alternative to Morning Joe, which Current executives view as an essentially conservative broadcast.
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Though he’s a ghost in Current’s West Coast offices, [Olberman's] spirit suffuses the place. Uygur, who considers him a mentor, describes MSNBC as “the house Olbermann built.” Granholm calls him “the Walt Whitman of political writing.”
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“The right wing is so much better organized, they’re machines, they’re robots,” says Uygur. And mainstream media are terrified of them. “It’s like, ‘Oh, my God, if I tell people facts, the Republicans will yell at me,’” he says.
* * * *
But perhaps the largest gamble is Olbermann himself. Unafraid of conflict on the air, or off, the anchor has a legendary temper. He was caustic and persnickety, former colleagues say. One news report holds that staffers at MSNBC had to communicate with him through a mailbox outside his office.
That reputation has continued at Current TV. Gore and Hyatt managed to placate Olbermann enough in November to prevent him from leaving, but theirs is hardly a close working relationship. Following that episode, the anchor failed to respond to emails from others at the network about plans to cover the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, according to a network source, and so Bohrman was forced to plan around him. . . When the coverage of Iowa and New Hampshire did air, it featured Uygur and Granholm anchoring alongside Gore himself.
* * * *
Gore, ever politic, presses on. “Keith is fulfilling exactly the role that I had hoped for,” he told Newsweek in an email interview.
And it could all have a happy ending.
Total failure...